


The Landscape

by Priscellie



Category: Codex Alera - Butcher
Genre: F/M, Yuletide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-12-21
Updated: 2008-12-21
Packaged: 2017-10-04 20:16:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,005
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/33724
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Priscellie/pseuds/Priscellie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the events of <i>Princeps' Fury</i>, Amara muses on the past and fights for her future.  Spoilers for <i>Princeps' Fury</i>, naturally.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Landscape

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Maat (maat_seshat)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/maat_seshat/gifts).



> Disclaimer: Amara, Gaius, Bernard, Aquitaine, and all other characters and concepts from the Codex Alera series belong to Jim Butcher and Penguin Books.

I.

The landscape had changed.

Days after the First Lord's death, the gaping scar of land that had once been Alera Imperia continued to give off searing heat, the rent earth still molten in places. Water from the Gaul had replaced the Citadel with a gently boiling lake. Though the clinging cloud of steam had largely dispersed, the atmosphere still shimmered above the ruins, and the Knights Aeris that crisscrossed the sky in their efforts coordinate troops, suppies, and refugees gave it a wide berth.

Both predictably and against all reason, as the number of missing climbed higher, the maddest and foolhardiest and most desperate of folk began to voice notions of crafters trapped in the wreckage, insulated from the heat with firecraft or walled off from the deluge by subterranean earthworks. Naturally, their protests were met with little patience. A human's chance at withstanding such an onslaught was next to impossible, no matter what furies he had at his command. There were no survivors, vord or Aleran alike.

Gaius had made certain of that.

Amara's throat tightened as she surveyed the wreckage once again, tears stinging her eyes that had nothing to do with the sulfurous fumes Cirrus filtered from the air around her. No matter how many times she saw the devastated land, the sheer magnitude of the loss remained all simply too much to take in. The city was _gone_. A millennium's worth of construction, reconstruction, and refinement--innumerable generations building on the art and architecture and livelihoods of those who came before--had been swallowed up in moments, as though they had never existed.

In the weeks prior, Amara had raged and mourned and despaired over the deaths of untold thousands at Ceres and the surrounding steadholts, but she had been sustained by the hope that her discovery might help unmake the Vord's latest weapon, turning the tide of the war in Alera's favor. Like Aricholt, back home in Calderon, Ceres could be rebuilt, and families displaced by war with the Canim or the waste of Kalare could reclaim the solid city walls and start anew, in the greatest tradition of Aleran tenacity. It strained the border between optimism and delusion, but she'd still felt it possible to find some glimmer of home for the future in the ashes of Ceres. But _this_... this utter ruin, this destruction... If this was what it would take to defeat the vord, Amara had difficulty believing there would be an Alera left to save for very much longer.

She risked flying a little closer and peered into the depths of the lake, trying to make out the shapes of familiar structures, submerged beneath tons upon tons of earth and water. She tried to approximate where the Academy might lie, then the market square, the Grey Tower, and the Senatorium, to no avail.

She forced herself to imagine long-suffering surveyors and mapmakers grudgingly tearing up their work and starting afresh, charting the new face of Alera. She would not allow herself to contemplate any other future. There would be mapmakers and surveyors, because that was the way the world had always been, and a world without mapmakers or surveyors was a world in which the Aleran civilization was no more. The hope may have be as false as that driving the men and women who scanned the lake for any sign of life, but the alternative was even more unthinkable.

She wondered what they would name this barren caldera that had once been the cultural seat of a continent. Lake Imperia, perhaps. The last stand of Gaius Sextus, whose death pained her more than she would have thought possible mere months before. She had to laugh at the arrogance of the man. As all leaders seek to do and only some achieve, he had truly made his mark on the realm.

She turned her back on the architectural graveyard at the sound of an approaching windstream behind her. He was a young Knight Aeris she knew by sight but not by name. She issued the standard signal, and he responded with the appropriate countersign, then gestured at her to follow him back to the camp, and that her presence was required by the First Lord.

The First Lord.

She sighed and signaled her understanding before following him back to the Crown Legion's command tent. The past and future would have to wait. The present demanded her attention.

II.

As the harsh realities of war continued to press in around her, Amara longed for stillness, a moment of calm. She wanted the privacy to savor her husband's presence without fear of being interrupted by the million tiny disasters that could apparently only be solved with her husband's or her own expertise. She wanted time to lose herself in the sheer sensation of his touch, only to find herself again in a simple, searing kiss. She wanted to lie cradled in his arms as they look turns spinning out their hopes and dreams of a future together.

She couldn't hide her smile at the thought of Bernard's plan to adopt a number of high lords' bastards. She imagined a row of young men and women, skin and hair and eyes in every color of the continent, all calling House Calderonus their home. She thought of Masha first, almost certainly the daughter of Brencis Minoris. Her heart went out to the little girl who had suffered so under Kalarus' rule. And recalling the rare occasions when Bernard had spoken of his daughters, Amara had no doubt he would be a wonderful father.

But until the vord were destroyed, that world would never be more than a passing fancy, a false hope to keep the despair at bay. And even if the Alerans wiped out every last bug, there was no guarantee the dream would come to pass. Every wounded or slain legionnaire served as a harsh reminder of just how fragile an Aleran's life could be.

One night, limbs still twined with Bernard's, she'd suddenly awoken with a feeling of such terror gripping her heart that she had to struggle to draw breath. She couldn't speak, couldn't make a noise. It was rabbit-fear, needle-sharp, simultaneously paralyzing her and setting her heartbeat racing. The fact that their lives had depended on keeping silent for months on end had left its mark. She shut her eyes, willing her body back under control, but the bodies of holders were seared on the inside of her eyelids, whole steadholts dripping with waxy green croach. From horizon to horizon, the landscape was one solid mass of it.

"It's alright, love," Bernard murmured, drawing her closer, but his words had the opposite effect. After long months of silence, every loud breath a threat to their survival, terror of making noise was coded into her very skin. Her grip tightened on Bernard's arm as she willed the world to be silent. Every whisper, every rustle of fabric served to magnify her fear.

Bernard stroked her cheek, allowing a subtle hint of earthcrafting into the gesture, a lesser degree of the method he used to calm horses. He quieted his own breathing to match hers, then slowly let it grow louder. Amara forced herself to mimic him. Soon, they had worked up from a light, quick inhalation through the nose to a heavy, deliberate wheeze, the sort of sound that would have given them away in a heartbeat, back in Ceres.

Gradually, the paralytic fear eased its grip on her heart.

She hoped it wouldn't be back again the next night, as it had all the nights before. She hoped never to see the bodies again.

III.

With his slim build and handsome, narrow features, the slender steel circlet upon his brow suited Aquitainus Attis. Aquitainus Primus, some called him now. It turned Amara's stomach. Soon, Isana and the legions she won from the Shieldwall--some of the most experienced, capable fighters in the realm--would be the only reminders of the true heir to Alera's throne. While the revelation of the new Princeps' and First Lady's identities had initially been celebrated, the longer Octavian remained away, the greater animosity stirred among the men. The legions most loyal to the Princeps had departed with him, and without their testimony, rumors and insinuations and aspersions to his character spread like wildfire. Amara did not anticipate an enthusiastic reception for Octavian, should he return at all, and should Alera survive to see it.

Similarly, it was remarkable how quickly the sins of Lord Aquitaine seemed to fade from the minds of those he commanded. For Amara, it rankled that the realm's only chance for stability came at the hands of a man who should have been fed to the crows for treachery against the crown years ago. Yet he was a brilliant tactician, a prudent leader, and his transition to the throne was as seamless as one might hope for. In such desperate times, integrity was not a luxury Alerans could afford in that office.

It was difficult to know where she stood with Aquitaine. Their enmity was clear, yet neither of them were fools. He knew Amara's talents and experience were an asset to the realm, and her insight from Gaius' final mission could prove to be of further value. For her part, Amara knew Aquitaine's strengths, and she had no interest in jeopardizing the survival of the realm by attempting to sabotage what was clearly the lesser of two evils.

Still, as the tide of affection in the legions shifted from Octavian to Aquitaine, Amara regarded any move on Aquitaine's part that brought greater recognition and admiration to the family of the Princeps with deep suspicion. So when Aquitaine authorized the strike team she proposed and named her its leader, Amara didn't know whether to thank him or to expect at any moment to be shot in the back.

As the refugees continued north to Placida, safeguarded by the Third Placidan legion, the remaining eight legions marched south, back towards the vord stronghold at Ceres. The cut causeways ensured that their pace was infuriatingly slow, and by the end of the first day, the men were exhausted and frustrated, having covered a distance that should have taken them a couple hours. Seated among them by one of the bonfires, Amara noted that a number of them nursed blisters from such a long march, unassisted by furycraft.

As a Countess, her responsibility was to more than strategy and commanding orders. In battle, hope and morale could be the deciding factor between victory and defeat. Men who believed they had already lost seldom fought as hard as those who thought they had something to gain by their struggle. Amara set out to give the legions a source of pride.

She emerged from her conference with Aquitaine with two dozen windcrafters and a dozen firecrafters. At first, they had grumbled amongst themselves at the interruption of their dinner. After she had explained her plan, they seemed more eager and energized than she had seen any soldier in days.

A chill spring breeze ruffled through her hair and buffeted her skin as she and her team of crafters swept the countryside, seeking out the hidden patches of glowing green croach and destroying them with fire. If the vord wanted to press northward again within thirty miles of the road to Ceres, they would find their advance supply chain razed to the ground.

The next night, after word had gotten out around the camp, the mission became a contest to see which trio of men could find and destroy the most of it. By the next night, a small gambling ring had sprung up around the event, and the winning teams were hailed as heroes. Day by day, they were reclaiming Alera's landscape, zeroing in on the vord stronghold in Ceres and Kalare.

And in the few hours of sleep left to her each night, nestled in her husband's arms, she slept so soundly she couldn't see the bodies at all.


End file.
